Monday, March 6, 2017

Taking a little Flack

In
June of last year, Curt Ladnier—a member-in-good-standing of the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
faithful—needed a few episodes of TV’s The Thin Man for his collection and
proposed a swap: the first five installments of the Peter Lawford-Phyllis Kirk
boob tube version for some rare episodes of The LoneWolf,
a syndicated 1954-55 TV series based on the literary sleuth created by Louis
Joseph Vance. (The character appeared in
a slew of B-movie mysteries—many of them with legendary silver screen cad
Warren William as L.W.—and a 1948-49 radio series with Gerald Mohr…who also tackled
the role in a handful of the films.) The
TV Wolf
starred Louis Hayward and since I hadn’t sampled it I was only too happy to
help Br’er Curt out. We have since that
time swapped many e-mails; he’s currently working on a DVD project capturing
those episodes of The Felony Squad that I had to give up when we reluctantly
jettisoned getTV from our DISH programming.

Audiences love a light-hearted con story. The enormous popularity of big screen
productions like TheSting and Ocean’s Eleven paved the way for such recent television successes
as Leverage,
Hustle,
and their like. And these series had
predecessors on the small screen, from ABC’s quintessential western sharpster Maverick
to NBC’s criminally short-lived The Rogues. But ushering these series onto television’s
airwaves was the grand-daddy of all comedic con artist shows, the DuMont
Network’s 1953 production Colonel Humphrey Flack.

Colonel Flack, a loveable scoundrel who inhabited DuMont’s
Wednesday night line-up, was a genial fraud who lived by his wits. Possessed of an air of quality and a taste
for the finer things in life, he frequented the best clubs and hotels,
typically with only a few cents to his name.
Flack never let the nuisance of poverty stand in the way of his comforts,
much to the consternation of his less polished – but more practical –
confederate, Uthas Garvey. But in spite
of his penchant for living beyond his means, Colonel Flack was more an
opportunist than a criminal. He was
gifted with an unerring knack of turning any situation to his own advantage,
and the insight to realize that there was money to be had whenever others were
cheating the system. He had a professed
dislike of “beastly chiselers,” whom he took every opportunity to fleece in
Robin Hood fashion (pocketing a modest percentage to cover expenses).

Colonel Flack creator Everett Rhodes Castle

Despite television’s relative infancy in 1953, Flack and
Garvey were old hands at the confidence game by the time they stole onto
DuMont’s schedule. The colonel was the
brainchild of magazine writer Everett Rhodes Castle, who chronicled Flack’s
exploits in a dozen issues of The
Saturday Evening Post between 1936 and 1946. Castle’s yarns proved popular, and as early
as the summer of 1937 his creation had already leapt from the page to the
airwaves. Newspapers announced radio
broadcasts of Col.Humphrey Flack on Milwaukee’s
station WTMJ (1). Little is known about
this early production, but it was likely a syndicated series, as there is no
indication it ever had a sustaining run on a network. But the show wasn’t just a fleeting blip in
broadcast history, as advertisements confirm it was on the air in various
markets at least as late as the autumn of 1944 (2).

Some years before the demise of his first incarnation on
radio, Colonel Flack made the transition to the fledgling medium of
television. While a weekly Flack TV
series was still decades away, on April 13, 1939 the Colonel was the
protagonist of NBC Television’s one-shot production A Spot of Philanthropy. Loosely based on Everett Rhodes Castle’s 1938
short story of the same name, the program starred George Taylor as Colonel
Flack and Michael Drake as the long-suffering Garvey (3).

Wendell Holmes as Colonel Flack

Despite his early foray into television, radio was far from
finished with Colonel Humphrey Flack. He
was next heard on NBC Blue, in their program Listening Post’s June 22,
1945 dramatization of the SaturdayEvening Post story “Colonel Flack and
the Tender Ethic” (4). Flack fans must
have been delighted, as the story hit the airwaves the same week the magazine
version debuted in print. Three years
later, the colonel finally snared a sustaining series on network radio when the
Wilbur Stark/Jerry Layton company Program Productions sold NBC a twelve-episode
run of Colonel Humphrey Flack.
Premiering at 8:00 PM EST on Thursday July 3, 1947, the series was a
summer replacement for either The Aldrich Family or ADay
in the Life of Dennis Day (announcements from the era disagree). Directed by Ed King, the series starred
Wendell Holmes as Flack and Frank Maxwell as Garvey, in scripts written by Tom
Dougall and Sheldon Stark (5). At the
close of the summer season, NBC declined to contract for further episodes, and
the series folded with its September 18, 1947 broadcast.

Also in 1947, mystery luminary Ellery Queen chose Colonel
Flack for inclusion in the hardcover anthology Rogues’ Gallery: The Great Criminals of Modern Fiction. Published under the London imprint Faber and
Faber, the collection Included Everett Rhodes Castle’s 1943 tale “The Colonel
Gives a Party.” The story’s publication
in Queen’s anthology marks the colonel’s only appearance between the covers of
a book. As of this writing some 70 years
later, the remainder of Colonel Flack’s literary escapades remain uncollected
and unreprinted.

Undeterred by the failure of their 1947 radio production to
gain traction, Stark-Layton Productions redoubled their efforts to further
develop the Flack franchise. In 1953,
they sold pilots for both a proposed television series and another radio
adaptation to ABC. The television
production aired under the title “Colonel Humphrey J. Flack” as the May 31,
1953 installment of Plymouth Playhouse (a.k.a. ABCAlbum Playhouse). This time around, British actor Alan Mowbray
stepped into the role of the colonel and Frank McHugh played Garvey, in a story
about the impoverished pair embarking on an ocean cruise courtesy of tickets
won in a raffle (6). The production was
rebroadcast on the West Coast two weeks later, on June 16, 1953 (7).

The radio pilot brought the Mowbray/McHugh pairing before
the microphones of ABC Playhouse for that series’ June 11, 1953 broadcast, also
titled “Colonel Humphrey J. Flack.” The
episode related Flack and Garvey’s plan to aid a young medical student in
recovering his life savings (8). In
selling ABC pilots for both radio and television, Stark-Layton Productions
probably felt they had all bases covered for the launch of a new Flack
series. But in the end, the network
declined to move forward with either.

Frank Jenks (as Garvey) and Alan Mowbray (as Flack)

However, the failure of the ABC television pilot had a
silver lining. Rather than throwing in
the towel on the project, Stark-Layton switched gears and pitched it to the
DuMont Television Network. The gamble
scored success and, under the sponsorship of the American Chicle Company, Colonel
Humphrey Flack joined DuMont’s weekly line-up on Wednesday October 7,
1953. Alan Mowbray returned in the role
of Colonel Flack, but Frank McHugh did not make the transition from the
pilot. Instead, the part of Garvey was
taken up ably by veteran character actor Frank Jenks (9). The series was well-received, with Billboard praising its “smart scripting”
and the “smooth teamwork” of its principal performers. “Here’s one show that continues to provide us
with welcome relief from mayhem, cops and robbers,” was the sentiment from the
television critic of The Brooklyn Daily
Eagle (10).

Perhaps most pleased with Colonel Humphrey Flack
was the star himself, Alan Mowbray.
Though he had portrayed a wide range of characters in hundreds of films,
Mowbray feared he was best remembered for the handful of times he had played a
butler. Landing the lead in DuMont’s
series changed that. “Now I’m called
‘Colonel’ as much as I’m called Mowbray,” he confided to reporters in 1954
(11). Even more satisfying was the
remark from Flack creator Everett Rhodes Castle, who commented that he couldn’t
tell where Alan Mowbray left off and Colonel Flack began (12). “I always try to be the complete rogue,”
Mowbray expounded upon his affinity for the character, “but always keep within
the law. The colonel never commits an
overt act of any sort. That’s important
because so many children are watching” (13).

Children and adults alike tuned in to make Colonel
Humphrey Flack a mainstay on DuMont.
The network chronicled Flack and Garvey’s escapades through 39 live
weekly telecasts, eventually drawing the season to a close on July 2,
1954. With the Colonel’s departure from
the airwaves during the summer months, newspapers reported that the series was
likely to move to CBS (14). In the end,
however, autumn was not to see Colonel Flack’s return to any network. DuMont had some limited success in
syndicating their kinescopes of the original 39 broadcasts to regional markets,
but no further episodes of the series were put into production. Alan Mowbray later attributed the unexpected
cancellation of the show to the rise in popularity of westerns. “We were crowded off by cowboys,” was his
glib assessment (15).

With his prolonged absence from network schedules, things
looked bleak for Colonel Flack’s television career. But you can’t keep a good rogue down, and in
1958 Flack was back, when CBS Films approached Stark-Layton Productions about a
revival to be marketed in first run syndication. Sporting the almost imperceptibly tweaked
title of Colonel Humphrey J. Flack, the new series went into production
in the autumn of 1958, bringing Alan Mowbray and Frank Jenks back in the
principal roles. Mowbray was heartened
by the fact that this revival would be shot on film, unlike the series’ earlier
live incarnation on DuMont. “Every time
I went in front of those live cameras I wished I wasn’t there,” he remarked to TheDetroit
Free Press. “Why I didn’t collapse at the end of the season I don’t
know.” He was happy for the chance to
portray Flack in a more polished filmed production -- and the prospect of
residuals for subsequent reruns was also enticing.

Colonel Humphrey J. Flack hit the airwaves at the close of
1958, and was sold to major markets across the U.S. Attracting sponsors ranging from Standard Oil
to Budweiser, the 39-episode package garnered praise from Variety as “the only fresh comedy series in syndication.” However, critical acclaim did not prevent
some misconceptions from arising about the new series’ content. Few of the filmed episodes were remakes of
installments from DuMont’s earlier live production, but returning fans who
tuned in to episodes such as “Saddle Sore” or “Back to the Coal Mines” may have
gotten the mistaken impression that the revival series was simply an attempt to
re-shoot the original 39 scripts.

Certainly, multiple sources over the years have cited this
as fact, but the idea doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. A comparison of the titles between both
series reveals very few similarities, and Alan Mowbray himself drove the final
nail in this misconception’s coffin. In
a 1959 interview, he reflected on Flack’s filmed exploits in relation to the
earlier live telecasts. “We used … new
stories this season, so we [still have the] old ones to dip into if our …
writers can’t come up with anything.
They are our insurance policy” (16).
So Mowbray believed the DuMont scripts could be used as the basis of a
subsequent season for 1959–60.

Unfortunately, even having a few dozen scripts in reserve
couldn’t ensure a second season for ColonelHumphrey J. Flack, and
CBS Films commissioned no further episodes after their run wrapped production
in the spring of 1959. Given that low
ratings were the primary factor behind the series’ demise, fan response to the
cancellation was surprisingly vocal.
When Michigan broadcaster WWJ-TV removed the show from its schedule in
December 1959, a local civic group published a protest on the front page of The Detroit News and organized a
letter-writing campaign to CBS Films (17).
In the end, Flack fans could take comfort in the fact that the filmed
series remained available in syndication for years, but no new episodes would
be produced.

Today Colonel Flack persists primarily as a footnote in
entertainment history. His radio
adventures are lost, and his print appearances languish in the yellowed pages
of vintage periodicals. A handful of
kinescopes of his DuMont exploits are held by the UCLA Film Archive in
California and the Paley Center for Media in New York, while his syndicated television
series is now a part of the Viacom film library. Aside from one or two isolated broadcasts, he
has been absent from the airwaves for decades.
Yet despite being all but forgotten today, he blazed a trail for series
ranging from It Takes a Thief to Tenspeed and Brownshoe. And for that, God bless Colonel Humphrey
Flack!

1. Various
sources state that the 1958–59 CBS Films series was later marketed under the
alternate titles The Fabulous Fraud, The Imposter and The
Adventures of Colonel Flack, but to date no advertisements or
documentation confirming these variant titles have surfaced.

2. While the
show’s basic formula remained substantially the same between the DuMont series
and its later syndicated incarnation, there was one significant change. A laugh track was added to the filmed series,
giving the revival a more pronounced “sitcom” feeling.

11 comments:

Greg Daniel
said...

Great post as 1) the character/premise are right up my alley; and 2) I have zero previous knowledge of Flack & company. Of course, the lack of print, video, and/or audio collections have put me in a bit of a bind, but it's kind of nice to have a thirst that can't just be quenched by going on eBay or Amazon and tossing out a few shekels (when I have a few shekels to toss about). Thanks for sharing this one.

Thanks for the kind words about my essay, Greg! Yeah, Colonel Flack is a bit on the obscure side. Your local public library might have some of the original SATURDAY EVENING POST stories (I know mine has the pertinent issues on microfilm). A meager handful of the TV episodes are circulating among collectors of vintage television. So far I've managed to unearth one kinescope from the DuMont run, and two episodes from the 1958 - 59 syndication package. One is from a late 1990s broadcast on TV Land, so at least one episode has aired since the widespread advent of home recording. I've also just discovered that the syndicated series has aired on Australia's Network Ten (though I have no idea how long ago). So there could be copies lurking somewhere Down Under, if we could but find them.-Curt Ladnier

I wish I had some interesting anecdote about locating the copy of that DuMont kinescope, Clarke, but the banal truth is I stumbled across it in the holdings of another video collector. I was actually looking for something else on his list, and just happened to notice COLONEL HUMPHREY FLACK while I was digging. As a fan of the light-hearted con genre, I had long wanted to sample FLACK, and the collector was kind enough to trade me his copies. And, of course, that eventually sparked my interest in writing an article. I must say, at the risk of contradicting Alan Mowbray, I prefer DuMont's live series to the later filmed production. The DuMont show felt less like a situation comedy (even though I guess it really was a proto sitcom). The kinescope is of Episode 37 (title unknown) broadcast June 18, 1954. The plot involves Flack and Garvey confounding a pair of cardsharps on an ocean cruise. The episode was helmed by Seymour Robbie (a prolific director for television, who later worked on BATMAN and THE GREEN HORNET, among many other projects). The episode also features a young Court Benson in a supporting role. The kinescope shows some marked print damage, and does not include any commercials. But it's still quite viewable, and I'm thrilled to be lucky enough to have run it to earth.

Thanks for identifying that episode for me, Clarke. One good turn deserves another, so I posted a copy of the kinescope to YouTube this evening. Check it out:

https://youtu.be/eW-_HRgMtmM

I hope you'll enjoy seeing it. BTW, would you happen to have title info on any of the other 1953 - 54 episodes I was unable to identify? I know one of them was titled "The Wild West," but I'm not positive of the broadcast date yet.

Bless you for posting that, Curt. In 30 years of DuMont research (the web site itself will be 20 years old soon), I have seen only clips of the DuMont version. As to the other absent titles, let me do some digging and see what I can learn. I don't have all the answers, but I'm getting better with the questions. :) Thanks! (And thanks to Ivan for his blog, which has facilitated all this.) C.

Thanks for the additional info, Clarke. I'm in the process of culling thru old newspapers for further titles and descriptions of episodes of COLONEL HUMPHREY FLACK. Also found the website of another video collector who has further FLACK episodes, but I don't know if they're from DuMont or the later syndicated series. I suspect they're from the later run, but don't know for sure at this point.

Good news, Clarke! One of the FLACK videos I got from that other collector I located this week turned out to be another DuMont kinescope. This one is Episode 7 "The Missing Heir" broadcast November 18, 1953, and this one includes the original commercials. I've also had a fair bit of luck with identifying more of the previously undocumented episodes titles from COLONEL HUMPHREY FLACK. Ivan has very graciously updated my article to include the titles: "African Expedition" (12/23/53), "The Department Story" (1/30/54), "The Latin Major" (3/6/54), "Poor Little Rich Boy" (4/17/54), and "Good Old Bob" (5/28/54). So there are only four left to identify. If you can shed any light on those, I'll be anxious to hear about it. Thanks.